Mostly about antisemitism, other racisms, Buddhism, and perhaps sometimes football. When I was in high school, I found that Ignatius literally meant "not ignoble," and it struck me just how pompous such a double negative can be. I'd rather remind myself that I, unlike the popes, am fallible. Even when I'm wearing my pope-hat. Yes, I have a pope-hat.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Why so many anti-Israel resolutions in the UN

A good part of the answer is institutional bias in the UN itself. Recently, it's come out that one of the most anti-Israel officials at the UN, Jean Ziegler, has praised the Holocaust Denier Roger Gaurady. (For his Holocaust Denial, not his saxophone playing.)

In 1996, Mr. Ziegler publicly defended Roger Garaudy, a French Stalinist whose book The Founding Myths of Modern Israel denies the Holocaust. “All your work as a writer and philosopher,” Mr. Ziegler wrote on April 1, 1996, “attests to the rigor of your analysis and the unwavering honesty of your intentions. It makes you one of the leading thinkers of our time.”

If Zeigler believes Gaurady's analyses is rigorous, it seems to me he is a Holocaust Denier, clearly biased and unfit for position related to Israel as well as morally compromised and unfit for any position at the UN. Yet when UN Watch asked the Swiss to withdraw his nomination to the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, Switzerland declined.

As Deborah Lipstadt says:

This is really an outrage... Though UN critics are probably shrugging their shoulders and saying: "So what else is new?"